Interracial Couples, Intimacy, and Therapy: Crossing Racial Borders

Interracial Couples, Intimacy, & Therapy

Interracial Couples, Intimacy, & Therapy

Crossing Racial Borders

KYLE D. KILLIAN

Columbia University Press

New York

Columbia University Press

Publishers Since 1893

New York   Chichester, West Sussex

cup.columbia.edu

Copyright © 2013 Columbia University Press

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E-ISBN 978-0-231-53647-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Killian, Kyle D.

Interracial couples, intimacy, and therapy: crossing racial borders / Kyle D. Killian.

        pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-231-13294-7 (cloth: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-13295-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53647-9 (ebook)

1. Interracial marriage. 2. Interracial dating. 3. Couples— Counseling of. I. Title.

HQ1031.K525    2013

306.84′6—dc23

2013009502

A Columbia University Press E-book.

CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at cup-ebook@columbia.edu.

Cover design: Jordan Wannemacher

Cover image: © Corbis

References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing. Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

To Anna M. Agathangelou—Lover, partner, mother of our two sons, and most trusted friend and colleague—Your love, brilliance, and beauty continue to inspire my spirit

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction   WHAT INTERRACIAL COUPLES CAN TELL US

Significance of the Book

Unpacking Basic Concepts: Race, Discrimination, and Miscegenation

Interracial in the Age of Obama: The Impact of Color-Blind and Postracial Discourses

The Politics of Voice: A Note from the Author

The Couples, the Interviews, and Analysis

One   RACIALIZED BODIES AND BORDERS IN THE UNITED STATES

Defining and Demarcating Borders

Interracial Borders from the Sixteenth Century to the Present

Trends in Black–White Intermarriage

Race and Sex Differences in Marriage Rates: The Marriage Squeeze

Interracial Mate-Selection Theories

Summary

Two   CROSSING A BLACK-AND-WHITE BORDER: CHOOSING THE OTHER

Attraction and Falling in Love

Partners’ Reactions to Differences

Is There Any Difference?

Negotiating Differences in Axes of Power to Establish a Couple Identity

In Black and White: The Border of Race

He Said, She Said: The Border of Gender

Summary

Three   CROSSING COMMUNITY BORDERS: FAMILIES OF ORIGIN, FRIENDS, AND SOCIETY AT LARGE

Social Support and Resistance to the Relationship

Strategies of Coping with Reactions

Multiracial Couples and Social Networks

Partner Sensitivity to Racism: The Community Context

Summary

Four   A NEXUS OF BORDERS: THE NEXT GENERATION, AND INTERSECTIONS OF RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER

The Next Generation and Their Opportunities

A Persistent Question: What About the Children?

Intersections of Gender and Race

Intersections of Race and Class

White Male and Female Partners

About Difference: Social and Political Dimensions

Happy Together? Processes Contributing to Couple Identity Formation

Couple Identities and Negotiation Styles

Summary

Five   RAISING (AND ERASING) DIFFERENCE: DOMINANT AND MARGINALIZED DISCOURSES IN INTERRACIAL COUPLES’ NARRATIVES

What Is Discourse Analysis?

The Discourse of Homogamy

The Discourse of Hypersensitivity

The Discourse of History’s Insignificance

What These Findings Say About Multiracial Couples

An Overarching Discourse of No Race Talk

Summary

Six   SYSTEMIC INTERVENTIONS WITH INTERRACIAL COUPLES

The Art of Drawing Distinctions Instead of Conclusions

What Couples Said About Therapy

Couples Who Might Present for Therapy

Specific Assessments and Interventions

A Narrative Approach to Therapy with Multiracial Couples

Summary

Seven   (RE)PRESENTATIONS OF INTERRACIAL COUPLES IN CINEMA, LITERATURE, AND RESEARCH

Cinema and Literature: Racial Logics and the Hegemonic Aesthetics of Intimacy

Interracial Couples’ Own Depictions of Their Intimate Relations

Reflecting on the Research and the Researcher: Integrating the Interview Process

Are Interracial Couples Different from Intraracial Couples?

Salience of Identities: Under Which Conditions, and Which Identities?

Appendix A. Summary of Participant Information

Appendix B. Assessment Inventories

Appendix C. Directions for Scoring the Assessment Inventories

Appendix D. Resources for Interracial Couples and Multiracial Families and Individuals

Notes

References

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

COMMUNITY SOCIAL SUPPORT is a wonderful resource and, according to my own research and personal experience, a source of resilience for helping professionals, immigrants and refugees, interracial couples, and authors. I am taking this opportunity to express my gratitude to important members of my community who have lent a hand in supporting this book project from its infancy forward. First, I’d like to thank Anna M. Agathangelou, whose intense intellect pushed me to think about the data in new ways and to organize the book more explicitly around the theme of borders. Her tireless feedback improved the quality of the theorization significantly. Thank you to our sons, Mikael and Aleksi, who are usually remarkably patient while waiting for Dad to put the finishing touches on some urgent matter at his computer in his office. Thanks also to Dr. David Baptiste, who provided substantive feedback on early papers that proceeded from the first data collections for this project and helped shape the clinical applications of the book.

Next, while I enjoy the writing process, most authors will tell you that a lot happens in the revision and editing processes. So, thank you to Jennifer Perillo, my editor at Columbia University Press, whose enthusiasm and energy shepherded my book to acceptance by the faculty editorial committee after a path that featured epic twists and turns. Thanks also to my mother, Sallie Ann Clayton Killian, for her careful reading of the final manuscript. A personal note of appreciation to my father, David Lawrence Killian, who expressed enthusiasm at the news of a book contract with Columbia, and encouraged me in my writing endeavors by celebrating with a dinner, a movie, or a beer whenever we got together and I needed a break from the keyboard.

Thanks must go also to Monica McGoldrick, Peter Fraenkel, Pilar Hernandez-Wolfe, and Fred Piercy for inspiring me via their ongoing examples as prolific writers and socially conscious trainers and practitioners, working to make a difference through knowledge production that has direct application to the society and communities we live in. To my sister, Kathryn Lynn, and my friends David Foley, Steve Zehler, Alice Tung, Becky Jones, Brian Blancke, Laura Marini, Paula Cerdan, and Bill Fisher, thanks for the laughter, tears, connection, and affection.

Finally, I wish to thank the twenty couples who agreed to open their lives and share their experiences. Their willingness to be vulnerable—to speak the sometimes unspeakable—made this project possible. May their life narratives encourage cultural inclusion and respect in others’ intimate relationships, and inspire professionals and lay persons alike to do more than merely tolerate, by beginning to understand, appreciate, and value diverse perspectives, experiences, and locations—the differences that make a difference.

Introduction

WHAT INTERRACIAL COUPLES CAN TELL US

LARRY: A guy at work told me, "Mixed marriage offends me, it just offends me." And I can accept that—it’s not for everybody. But it’s his heart that’s hurting, not mine. Not everyone can do this. Not everyone is that strong.

DEBRA: Yes, everybody has to decide what they can live with and can’t live with.

ROBERT: We’re just like any other couple … perfectly normal.

LINDA: As far as things happening to us, we’re real boring.

AS PEOPLE IN intimate relationships can quickly confirm, individuals looking at the same picture, or living through the same event, often report completely different experiences. Attending to disparate aspects of situations, we tend to interpret what we are sensing, feeling, and thinking in varied ways. The two couples quoted above report dissimilar experiences, just as individual partners in interracial relationships may have contrasting takes on or constructions of what is real or true for them. While this can be a source of confusion or frustration, it is also a phenomenon that all couples must learn to effectively handle if their relationship is to be successful. As partners in interracial relationships diverge from one another on multiple axes of power—such as gender, ethnicity, culture, religion, or social class—their basic beliefs and assumptions often differ markedly, and such variations shape the lenses through which they view their interpersonal worlds. Therefore, partners in interracial relationships, coming from distinct social locations, may exhibit very different understandings of everyday situations that they encounter.

Here is another illustration of the idea that the truth is in the eye of the beholder. The General Social Survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center found in 2002 that 10 percent of whites interviewed nationwide (and only 5 percent of blacks) were in favor of a law banning marriage between blacks and whites. What does this mean? This statistic can be interpreted, and used, in a variety of ways. On the one hand, one in ten whites, and only one in twenty blacks, wanted to outlaw interracial marriage, and these shrinking percentages speak to trends toward improvement (i.e., increased tolerance, decreased social distance, etc.) in interracial relations as seen in survey data over the past four decades. On the other hand, the fact that 10 percent of whites reported a wish to make it illegal for blacks and whites to marry speaks to a phenomenon of continued intolerance for interracial relationships (see Harris and Kalbfleisch 2000; Miller, Olson, and Fazio 2004). Persons who prefer the former, more optimistic view of this statistic might also suggest that race is not so significant as it once was. In contrast, persons who hold the latter view would point to race’s continuing importance across social contexts (e.g., public spaces, classrooms, therapy rooms, etc.).

In 2010 the Pew Research Center asked white respondents how they would feel if a member of their family were to marry a black person. Sixty-four percent said they would be fine with it, and 33 percent said it would bother them or they would not accept it. Similarly, Herman and Campbell (2012), using the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, report that 29 percent of white respondents reject relationships of all types—dating, cohabiting, marrying, and having children—with African Americans and Asian Americans. Back to the Pew Research Center study, seventy-three percent of Hispanics reported they would be fine if a family member married a black person, and 27 percent said they would be bothered by it or they would not accept it. The Pew Research Center also asked persons of color how they felt about a family member marrying a white person, and 19 percent of blacks and 15 percent of Hispanics reported that they would be bothered by it or would not accept it (Pew Research Center 2010a). To summarize these rates of nonacceptance: a full third of white respondents stated they would have a problem if a family member married a black person, and a little over a quarter of Hispanics voiced discomfort with the scenario. In contrast, fewer than one in five blacks and about one in seven Hispanics expressed concerns about a family member marrying a white person. Thus, the social location of the respondent vis-à-vis the social location of the person whom the relative is marrying has a clear impact on the favorability of the scenario. These statistics highlight a great range in perspectives about interracial relationships.

Partners in these relationships, and their family members, may also subscribe to these opinions and perspectives. Some people point to gains made and are quite positive about their experiences together and the opportunities available to their children. Other couples recount painful experiences of prejudice emanating from strangers, friends, and family, and discuss particular strategies they use to cope with racist discrimination. Still others speak to an experience of being welcomed warmly by the partner’s family of origin, while others experienced a cool, cautious reception by their partner’s family. These experiences are valid for those who have lived through them.

A main purpose of this book is to give voice to this diversity of perspectives, as expressed during in-depth interviews of twenty interracial couples. Individually and conjointly, these couples discussed in detail how they met, how they fell in love, what their life together has been like, what differences, if any, they have negotiated, and how and to what extent they have dealt with prejudice as a couple. Because it presents interracial couples’ own narratives about their relationships with friends and family and their strategic responses to prejudice, this book will be a valuable resource for interracial and multiethnic couples, the helping professionals (i.e., practitioners in psychology, marriage and family therapy, social work, and counseling) who work with them, and social scientists.

Historically seen as nonnormative, interracial marriage has dwelt in the margins of society and the social sciences and has been pathologized in both contexts. This book redresses this problem by privileging the voices of persons living in interracial marriages and by examining how processes of racism, sexism, and classism intersect and unfold in personal and professional relationships on a daily basis. Partners in interracial relationships will have an interest in this book as it addresses topics that are, and are not, talked about by many couples who come from different backgrounds. It offers ways to measure to what degree couples are on the same page when it comes to their experience of their relationship together. For instance, a partner may ask himself or herself, Do my partner and I agree about how much resistance or outright discrimination we have encountered while we’ve been together? How accepting is my partner of my values, customs, and traditions? And what similarities and differences do I have with my partner on basic beliefs and assumptions?

Interracial couples and multiracial families continue to proliferate, adding to the increasing diversity of US society, and of clinical practice. Among opposite-sex married couples, one in ten (5.4 million couples) are interracial (US Census 2010), representing an increase of 28 percent since 2000. In addition, the most recent census reported that 18 percent of heterosexual unmarried couples were of different races. With this major shift in demographics, helping professionals can expect to work with growing numbers of interracial couples and multiracial families who traverse multiple and potentially contradictory relational topographies (Imber-Black 2006:274).

The book discusses how therapists, psychologists, social workers, and counselors can effectively help interracial couples and multiracial families help themselves, and presents assessment tools and intervention techniques. Finally, this volume will be of interest to family researchers wishing to know more about how interracial couples experience their relationship together, the struggles or challenges they face, how they deal with partner differences, what family identities they create, and what they think about counseling or therapy. Thus, the audience for this book is therapists, social workers, counselors, and psychologists, scholars in the field of family studies and family science, and interracial couples interested in hearing the narratives of other couples who have negotiated difference, resisted familial and societal disapproval, and strived to make their relationships work.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BOOK

Why write a book on interracial couples? In the past four decades, racial and ethnic demographics have shifted dramatically in the United States, and the number of people marrying outside their own ethnic or racial group is on the rise (Childs 2005; Kennedy 2004; Negy and Snyder 2000; US Bureau of the Census 2000b). For instance, there are ten times as many interracial couples today than there were forty years ago. Considering the salience of skin color in US society, it is surprising that so few studies in the helping professions have been devoted to race, and, more specifically, to interracial couples (Davis 1990; Solsberry 1994); only a few seminal articles and book chapters (Falicov 1996; McGoldrick and Preto 1984) address the wide variety of interracial and interethnic relationships and the unique challenges such couples face.

McGoldrick and Preto (1984) stated that variables that influence the adjustment required in relationships include differences in race, social class, religious affiliation, and education, and they posited that couples from similar backgrounds would likely experience less disparity and less demand for adjustment than couples from diverse backgrounds. Thus, while interracial couples often experience the same types of relationship conflicts as couples comprising partners from the same racial or cultural backgrounds (Biever, Bobele, and North 1998; Ho, Matthews Rasheed, and Rasheed 2004), interracial couples (Killian 2001a, 2001b, 2003, 2012; Rosenblatt, Powell, and Karis 1995) frequently face distinct challenges and situations that require additional reflection, consideration, and negotiation by partners, especially in contexts that pathologize or problematize the forging of such connections (Killian 2008).

Little is known about how individuals from different racial and ethnic backgrounds come together to form new couple and family identities. Scholars often have viewed the subject as an opportunity for testing their theories on mate selection (see chapter 1) and relationship development but without incorporating couples’ own perceptions and experiences of becoming a couple. Additionally, clinical approaches usually do not explicitly address the interconnections of race, gender, and class (Collins 2000), and hence do not capture the complex and changing nature of clients’ social-psychological and political selves, or subjectivities. Recognizing these gaps, this book looks at how interracial couples view themselves and the social forces that implicitly and explicitly influence partners’ perceptions and experiences. The use of both individual and conjoint interviews as data sources is a unique methodological aspect of this book, one that provided insights not obtainable by projects that collected data either only from individual partners or only from couples. Further, the intersections of race, gender, and class are explored, and therapeutic approaches that incorporate analysis of the interviews with the couples are also presented. In sum, this book is significant because it addresses an important topic seldom addressed in the literature, features rich, descriptive data from interracial couples, and provides helping professionals useful tools and strategies for identifying issues and enhancing couples’ relationships.

UNPACKING BASIC CONCEPTS: RACE, DISCRIMINATION, AND MISCEGENATION

Much ambiguity exists with regard to the use of the terms race and ethnicity¹ in the American vernacular in general and the literature of the helping professions in particular. First appearing in English in 1580, race did not take on its modern definition until the early 1800s, evolving into one of the most misconstrued and misused words in our language (Farley 2005; Lowe 2009; Pedersen 2000).

The term derives much of its meaning from its roots in the physical sciences. In its biological conception, race invokes the system by which all life is classified into subcategories according to specific physical and structural traits. In the study of Homo sapiens, physical differences involving pigmentation, facial features, stature, and texture of body hair are factors commonly used to distinguish races. In the past few decades, theories of race based on biology have been rejected in favor of the conceptualization of race as a cultural category (Lowe 2009). We know that not all members of any particular racial grouping fit all the various criteria. For example, some women of African or Caribbean origin are born with straight hair, and some men whose ancestors originate from Asia are six feet or more in height. If we move beyond superficial characteristics, we discover that there are more similarities than differences between racial groups, and more differences within groups than between them. In fact, 94 percent of physical variation lies within so-called racial groups (American Anthropological Association 2010; Lowe 2009).

Despite these inherent problems, biological constructions of race were used implicitly to support segregation and social inequity and were embraced by many of the most enlightened members of North American society well into the twentieth century. The meaning or interpretation of particular characteristics, such as skin tone or the size and shape of a person’s nose, was determined by experts (typically self-appointed) who made sweeping predictions about the moral character, personality type, and intelligence of individuals based solely on the physical attributes of their racial group. Such thinking crystallized in the concept of polygenism, which posited separate origins and independent evolution of the races, and later served as the intellectual justification for colonialism, slavery, the Nazi concept of a master race (Wolpoff and Caspari 2002), and racist social policies and institutions such as the Jim Crow laws. For example, under Jim Crow, the state of Florida regulated intermarriage with the following law: All marriages between a white person and a negro, or between a white person and a person of negro descent to the fourth generation inclusive, are hereby forever prohibited. The term fourth generation inclusive is a direct reference to the one-drop rule, whereby many Southern states counted anyone who had one thirty-second African heritage as black (Jones 2000). Thus, one-drop laws policed the boundaries or borders of whiteness, with any racial mixture effectively negating whiteness. Eugenicists (e.g., Sir Francis Galton, Harry Heiselden) proposed that selective procreation (and sterilization, with or without consent) could refine the human race by encouraging the birth of children with healthy and beautiful characteristics (Washington 2006). Eugenic ideals were informed by ethnocentric Anglo-Saxon standards, and persons deemed genetically unfit for life were frequently dark-skinned.² Harry Hamilton Laughlin, eugenicist and head of the Station for Experimental Evolution at the beginning of the twentieth century, once expressed profound anxiety that no two races had ever maintained their purity while living in as close proximity as U.S. blacks and whites did (Washington 2006:193).

Eugenicists contributed their vision of racial hygiene to the dogma of fundamentalists who preached the moral necessity of maintaining a separation of the races. Literal, concrete interpreters of religious text still refer to Biblical verses to support their interpretations of God’s intentions. For instance, in the Old Testament, Moses tells his fellow Israelites, Do not intermarry with persons from other nations and of differing religious traditions (Deuteronomy 7:9, New International Version). Interpreted in a sociohistorical context, Moses is prohibiting interfaith marriages for fear they will erode the religious convictions of his people, but some persons today see it as an explicit, literal condemnation of all forms of intermarriage. Utilizing the concept of race, and upon empirical and religious bases, whites created an invidious hierarchy in which they occupied a position as a normative, superior, unprefixed people (Minnich 1990).

Arising from a set of prejudiced beliefs and attitudes, racism is manifested in both overtly hostile actions and more subtle dysconscious acts directed against persons of color (Rains 1998; Ridley 2005). Racist actions range from denial of goods and services, to psychological intimidation, to verbal and/or physical assault, to murder. Racial discrimination may be defined as concrete actions that adversely affect the personal safety, security, or social and economic opportunities of persons whose skin color or ethnic heritage differ from that of the perpetrator. Racism and discrimination are manifested in the attitudes and behaviors of individuals as well as in the actions of larger societal institutions. Because race remains a central organizing principle in US society (Brown et al. 2003; Twine and Gallagher 2008; Lee and Bean 2007; Zack 1997), persons who cross the color line and become intimate are viewed as unusual, problematic, or even deviant. And, of course, only societies that essentialize race, maintaining it as a principle of sociocultural organization and meaning, will see interracial couples as noteworthy phenomenon and imbue them with special social meaning (Childs 2005).

Thus, the notion of a pure white identity and the ideology of white supremacy have a paradoxical, synergistic relationship with interracial couples. The archaic, pejorative term for interracial coupling is miscegenation, derived from the Latin miscere (to mix) and the Indo-European gen, denoting genus or race. Defined then as mixture of different races, miscegenation served as a clarion call for white supremacists everywhere. White supremacy, by characterizing miscegenation as a social scourge, is able to sustain or reproduce itself by presenting mixed couples as something that must be resisted and fought against. Sexton eloquently asserted that white supremacy works to produce miscegenation in the sense that it articulates it, inscribes it—as its most precious renewable resource, as the necessary threat against which it continually constructs itself. … It relies upon miscegenation to reproduce its social relations (2002:20).

Because of the prevalence of racism in the wider social milieu (Childs 2005; Kennedy 2004; Romano 2003; Root 2001), partners in interracial relationships historically have experienced rejection, hostility, and criticism. For example, Lewandowski and Jackson (2001) found that European American men married to African American women were perceived as significantly less competent and as less likely to be professionally successful than were those married to European American women. African American men married to European American women were perceived as less competent, as less traditional, as having a weaker racial identity, and as less comfortable with same-race others than were those married to African American women.

Persons who discriminate against interracial couples may believe it is immoral or unnatural for persons of different racial groups to form couple relationships. While individual racism manifests itself in the behavior of one person or small groups of people, institutional racism involves the adverse, discriminatory behavior and policies of larger institutional structures. Institutions such as school boards, banks, and real estate agencies have been seen to engage in discrimination against individual persons of color and interracial couples (Farley 2005; Root 2001). And legal recourse is complicated for interracial couples, who are victims of discrimination because their status as an interracial couple alone does not neatly fit within the categories of plaintiffs who can allege discriminatory action because of race, familial status,